The first Nowadays indie rock festival last weekend at the ArtsQuest Center at SteelStacks had low attendance, but its organizers say there was something more important about it, and they hope to learn from it for future music festivals at the venue.

The festival was the first that ArtsQuest has held entirely within the walls of the ArtsQuest Center, after last year’s jam bands, blues, jazz, Latin music and Oktoberfest all used more of the campus, including the outdoors Levitt Pavilion.

ArtsQuest has said low attendance at those festivals has prompted it to pull back festival presentation to entirely inside ArtsQuest Center this year.

Nowadays sold about 1,000 tickets to the two-day festival – though that counts people who bought two-day tickets that might not have attended both days, who came only for single concerts, or who might not have shown up at all, ArtsQuest Vice President of Programming Patrick Brogan said.

The numbers of people at concerts at the festival didn’t seem that high. The highest attendance at a concert Friday was 165 people for Jukebox The Ghost, which played in Musikfest Cafe.

With the biggest crowd in the venue’s other stage being about 100 and perhaps 30 watching the Commons stage on the center’s first floor, that’s still a maximum crowd of 300 at any one time. But the shows stretched over 7 1/2 hours, meaning others could have come and gone during that time.

“Crowds Friday were a bit of a disappointment,” Brogan said. “But we got a great reception from the people who were here.”

And that, in addition to attendance, was another measure of success, Brogan said. “The audience got the best that you can get,” he said. “The vibe and energy was great among whoever was here.”

Official attendance Sunday was 537, and Brogan said there again was “a good vibe and energy throughout the building.”

“We got a lot of positive feedback about the breadth of entertainment,” Brogan said. The festival offered 22 acts on three stages over the two days, with musical styles including electronica, alt-country, piano rock, indie rock, mixed media and even the DJ offerings of closing night headliner RJD2.

“We’ll learn, and we’ll use what we learn this weekend to tweak the jazz, jam and blues festival to make them great experiences,” he said.

Before the festival, Brogan had said reaction to the festival would help determine the level of offerings of indie music on the ArtsQuest campus. He said the genre had been heavily requested in feedback, especially through social media, that ArtsQuest had collected.

ArtsQuest’s biggest festival – Bethlehem’s 29-year-old, 10-day Musikfest, to be held Aug. 3-12 – already has announced one electronica band as a headliner. MGMT will play the festival’s main SteelStage on Aug. 5. Tickets, at $35 and $45, are available at www.artsquest.org or by calling 610-332-1300.

But before that, Civil Twilight – whose music has been compared to early U2 -- will play in Musikfest Café on April 13.

“It’s another opportunity for the audience to support the music they’ve asked for,” Brogan said.

The general admission standing room show has more than 800 tickets remaining. Tickets, at $17, are available at www.artsquest.org or by calling 610-332-1300.

The comments to this entry have been closed.

JOHN J. MOSER has been around long enough to have seen the original Ramones in a small club in New Jersey, U2 from the fourth row of a theater and Bob Dylan's born-again tours. But he also has the number for All-American Rejects' Nick Wheeler on his cell phone, wrote the first story ever done on Jack's Mannequin and hung out in Wiz Khalifa's hotel room.

OTHER CONTRIBUTORS

JODI DUCKETT: As The Morning Call's assistant features editor responsible for entertainment, she spends a lot of time surveying the music landscape and sizing up the Valley's festivals and club scene. She's no expert, but enjoys it all — especially artists who resonated in her younger years, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Tracy Chapman, Santana and Joni Mitchell.

KATHY LAUER-WILLIAMS enjoys all types of music, from roots rock and folk to classical and opera. Music has been a constant backdrop to her life since she first sat on the steps listening to her mother’s Broadway LPs when she was 2. Since becoming a mother herself, she has become well-versed on the growing genre of kindie rock and, with her son in tow, can boast she has seen a majority of the current kid’s performers from Dan Zanes to They Might Be Giants.

STEPHANIE SIGAFOOS: A Jersey native raised in Northeast PA, she was reared in a house littered with 8-tracks, 45s and cassette tapes of The Beatles, Elvis, Meatloaf and Billy Joel. She also grew up on the sounds of Reba McEntire, Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw and can be found traversing the countryside in search of the sounds of a steel guitar. A fan of today's 'new country,' she digs mainstream/country-pop crossovers like Lady Antebellum and Sugarland and other artists that illustrate the genre's diversity.